... a short story
Whiiiii-eee-oooooo!!! agk! agk! Chaaaaaaagk!!!
Instantaneously awake and alert, Millicent, sideways from her pillow, focused on her father’s loaded twenty-gauge shotgun, leaning against the nightstand where she had placed it the previous evening — with deadly intent.
Whiiiii-eee-oooooo!!! agk! agk! Chaaaaaaagk!!!
Rising from her bed, she grabbed the weapon and cocked its trigger. She was not about to allow one obnoxiously loud, errant bird, of unknown species, to ruin her school vacation tradition of not arising until after ten from her bed — set for the summer in the breezy space between the two opened windows of her second-floor corner bedroom.
Whiiiii-eee-oooooo!!! agk! agk! Chaaaaaaagk!!!
Extending her upper self out of the south facing window, Millicent entered the verdant realm of the big ash tree — which had grown into a virtual happendage of the ‘house that had been her home’ for all of her thirty-two years.
BOOM!
Millicent just caught a glimpse of the grayish bird-creature as it flapped madly away — amidst an expanding plume of gun smoke and shredded leaf matter.
“Just keep on a going and you’ll be up to Canada, no time flat!” she shouted after it.
Because her parents were in Chicago — her father being an Iowan delegate to the 1912 Republican Party National Convention — there had been little hesitation on her part in deciding to take up arms in her endeavor to bring an end to her, now, week-long ordeal.
Millicent laid the gun on the floor and took a seat by her writing table, upon which were stacked the thirty-six new grammar textbooks she would be using the coming fall semester — as well as her broach watch, reading half past seven.
“Well, I suppose there’s no going back to bed now,” she thought.
Then something caught her eye out of her west facing window.
“What on earth?” she muttered.
A half-mile away, across her father’s fields of corn and alfalfa, a motorcar was stopped along the farm’s property line. Beside it, stood a tall step ladder — upon which stood a tall man, wearing a suit.
Millicent wondered if he might be a surveyor from the county land office — but that made no sense.
Quickly, she rummaged through her ‘catch all’ dresser drawer and located the mother-of-pearl opera glasses which her younger sister — now a married mother of three — had presented to her one Christmas, long ago. Then, sitting on her bed and leaning against the window sill, she commenced to spy upon the mysterious man — and his mysterious activities.
For a time, the tall stranger fiddled with a square contraption of some kind — the size of a lady’s hatbox — sitting atop the ‘A’ shaped ladder. Then he pulled a flat, dark object from the square thing, got down from the ladder, and placed it into the automobile. This was followed by the man’s removal and packing away of the ‘hatbox’ and the folding up and strapping onto the vehicle’s roof of the ladder. Finally, trailed by a faint cloud of dust, the automobile, along with the mysterious man, disappeared from Millicent’s sight.
Half an hour later, at the kitchen table, Millicent grumpily breakfasted on cold bacon, cornbread, and peaches. However, it was not the intrusive bird-creature anymore that was agitating her; it was the not knowing what the man had been up to doing out there on the ladder. It was akin to the way she felt when her eighth-grade boys would suddenly burst into laughter at some private joke. (Once, she had embarrassed herself by screaming back at them: “Do you take me for a fool?!”)
If only she could get herself to town, she thought, she could ask around about the stranger. But that would mean a thirty-minute buggy ride. And besides, she was not sure she knew how to hitch up the horse as her father had always taken care of such matters for her.
Then — four knocks from the door!
Millicent’s immediate instinct was to head upstairs to her room, as she would generally do when there were callers.
But she was the only one home.
Entering the front parlor, she could see its through lace curtains, a horseless carriage stopped in front of the house — with a ladder strapped to its top!
In rather a trance, Millicent answered the door.
The handsome man, in his mid-thirties, was indeed tall, over six feet: Grayish-blue summer suit, in need of a press; brown shoes, in need of a polish; short, light hair, receding some; boyish, self-effacing smile.
“Good morning, Madam. I’m wondering if, by chance, your husband might be about.”
After a very short think, Millicent responded, “No.”
“I see. Well …”
“Are you a drummer?” interjected Millicent.
“I suppose, of a sort, yes. I …”
“And you want to sell us a ladder … with a hatbox on top?” she inquisitioned.
“No, I …” stuttered the man, taken aback some.
“I’m not married,” declared Millicent. “This house belongs to my father … and to my mother.”
The man nodded.
“My father,” continued Millicent, “is with the Republicans, in Chicago. He’d like to see Roosevelt back on the job, but he doubts that’s going to happen, as Taft’s men are too much in control of the party, nowadays.”
“I see.”
“They’ve taken rooms, him and … he and … my mother … at the Palmer House.”
“It’s a fine hotel,” said the man. “I once had lunch there. My company’s headquarters are in Chicago, you see.”
Personally, I’ve never been to the Windy City. They say it’s pretty noisy ... and smelly, too, with all them … I mean those … stockyards.”
“It can be, yes, especially in the summer.”
“Wider spaces seem more suitable for human habitation,” propounded Millicent.
“I would say that I, too, prefer a life in the country,” agreed the thoroughly polite man.
Millicent now became aware of an internal pang, making its way up from her stomach to her throat; and with some effort, she pulled her eyes away from the man’s face.
But when he resumed speaking, she was back to gazing fixedly upon his well-formed and kindly features.
“My name is John Burdett. I’m a farm photographer.”
“A what?” Millicent responded, successfully removing the exclamative edge from the utterance only at the last split second.
“I’m with the Rememberland Picture Company. We make quality photographic images of agricultural lands … for farmers … and their posterity.”
“Why?” asked Millicent, praying that she was sounding conversational.
“Would you not find it appealing, perhaps, to one day to be able to show your grandchildren your father’s …”
“I told you, I’m not married,” she cut him off, aggression creeping back into her voice.
“I … of course … was … ah … speaking in the abstract. I, myself, too, am not married … in point of fact.”
Millicent felt a side ache developing.
John Burdett pulled a card from his inside coat pocket, handed it to Millicent, and said, “When your father returns, would you mind giving him this? I’ll be back through your area in the fall, at harvest time. If he is interested in our services, he can contact the Chicago office, and they will get word to me. Thank you for your time, Miss …”
“Chambers,” said Millicent.
“… Miss Chambers.”
When John Burdett turned and headed for his automobile, Millicent very nearly commanded him to “Stop!” — in the same manner which she might have addressed an out of line child on the playground. But, instead, she said — with all the gentility she could muster: “Excuse me, Mr. Burdett, but what were you doing, this morning, out yonder there, by the fence line?”
“Your neighbor, Mr. Pratt ... he has ordered photographs of each of his sixteen quarter-sections. I made the last one, this morning.”
“Pratt. Well. I see. That would make sense, then.”
As, once again, John Burdett’s automobile receded in a dusty cloud, Millicent felt a certain life force within her receding, as well; and the thought flashed through her that a solitary existence was most certainly to be her fate.
Then, as if in response to that thought — from some other, deeper place — there arose a profound and definitive “NO!”
Just behind her on the porch, inside a painted chest that also served as a seat, was her mother’s six-shooter — used for killing snakes.
After she had fired three pistol shots into the air, equally spaced two seconds apart, Millicent noticed the grayish bird-creature madly flapping off from the tool shed rooftop. John Burdett’s motor, on the other hand — now a hundred yards distant — continued on its way.
Once again, she raised the gun: Bang! Bang! Bang!
Shading her eyes with her free hand, and squinting, Millicent watched the automobile come to a stop, followed by John Burdett getting out to look back in her direction. Letting the gun fall to the ground, she then began waving with both arms, in a manner which she hoped would communicate the message that he should return.
Millicent stepped forward as the motorcar slowed to a standstill, and its occupant got out.
“Oh … Mr. Burdett … it’s … well … it’s so good to see you again … and … I just wanted to let you know, that after some reflection … and thought … it has occurred to me that it might be possible, for me … my father’s daughter, to … in his absence … act as his proxy … which is to say … by proxy, I could … ah … it’s not complicated, I assure you … I’ve got a Miriam Webster’s inside and I could look it up lickety-split, so that …”
“No need for that, Miss Chambers. I understand your meaning,” said John Burdett.
“Oh … good. I’m glad of that.”
“I have promised Mrs. Pratt I’d join them for coffeecake, at nine. That’s in fifteen minutes. Then, at eleven, I’m scheduled for a livery stable tableau, in town.”
“Lunch!” blurted out Millicent. “If you were to come for that, maybe … then I could listen to your proposal … I mean proposition … ah … whatever it is that you drummers … salesmen, that is … call it … and then, naturally, give it all due consideration … after weighing the facts, of course.”
As she once again watched the automobile disappear, Millicent sensed a tear on her cheek, and wondered: “What’s this?” (The last time she had cried, probably, was when she was ten — just about as long ago, probably, as when she had last fired a gun.)
Crossing the threshold, back into the house, Millicent’s enigmatic tears transmuted into tears of dread — and she cried out in a rising panic: “Lunch!?!?”
Millicent did not cook. She had never cooked. Before her parents had departed for the Republican National Convention in Chicago, her mother had stocked the larder with enough cooked bacon and cornbread to sustain her daughter during their absence. Millicent’s peaches, she harvested from her father’s small orchard. The odd carrot came from the vegetable garden.
She tried to imagine what a carrot and bacon crumble salad might be like, and decided it wouldn’t do at all. Mr. Burdett, being a man, would require a hardy midday meal. She considered the notion of shooting a chicken and setting it atop a campfire — since she had not a clue how to operate the kitchen stove.
Ham! Her father generally kept one in her granddad’s old smokehouse, which he would snack on from time to time while working. He had always said that there was no better tasting meat than a ham that had been salted, smoked and aged for over a year.
Fifteen minutes later, Millicent set a four pound, white-ish, green-ish, crusty, molded mass down upon her mother’s cutting board. “Well, it will no doubt be flavorful,” she thought, “as it certainly has an interesting smell about it, not altogether horrible.”
“What else?” she pondered? — then epiphanized: “Spicy beans! Perfect!” There were some cans in the pantry. Ham, cornbread, and spicy beans would make for a square meal if ever there was one — which she could surely warm up in a skillet held over some lighted candles. As for dessert? How could sugar sprinkled peaches not qualify?
Half an hour later, after an extensive and unsuccessful search, high and low, for her mother’s can-opener — and one botched can opening attempt involving her father’s hatchet, resulting in her having to change her blouse — Millicent sat on the painted chest on the porch, pointing the reloaded six-shooter at the can of spicy beans — sitting atop of the hitching post.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spied the grayish bird-creature alight upon the well house, but resisted the temptation to change her target.
Bang!
After they were married, John Burdett built Millicent a home in town, just a short walk from the school. He also established the community’s first photography studio, which thrived for many years — allowing them the luxury of hiring a cook for their ever-expanding family.
